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A periodic check on the market capitalisation of publicly quoted UK electronics companies... I've just taken the February snapshot of industry market capitalisation, for our Electronics Weekly Index... see
The market capitalisation of the UK electronics industryWith the number of companies stabilised, for better or worse this month can serve as the first benchmark...
How stands the industry? Well, it is currently worth at least
£842.2 billion...
Continue reading "Electronics Weekly Index - February 2012" »
Welcome to another post in the series by Nick Locke, of Nicab Ltd, who has over 15 years experience in the electronics manufacturing industry specialising in interconnection cable assembly.
Back in 1952 when Cannon first introduced the D-Series connector to the market they could not have imagined that they are still being used as the connector of choice for many interconnect applications.
This simple yet ingenious design has stood the test of time simply because it is so useful for a myriad of connectivity solutions.
We all know the d-connector but how well do you know it? Leaving aside the different number of ways and densities there are many different types. How many do you know? Well here is a simple guide to what is available and to enable you to make better design choices in the future.
Continue reading "Only Connect: On D-Type connectors" »
An Engineer in Wonderland has a new home. You can find this particular entry here. If you wish to leave a comment, please do that on the new blog.
Those clever guy's at Zebralight in China have come up with a neat way of making an LED torch compatible with both CR123 and AA cells.
Electrically, it just means a wider input voltage range - probably 0.9-4.0V.
But mechanically this has previously meant screw-on extension tubes to allow for the longer AA cell - maybe with a narrowed interior to deal with the AA's slimmer profile.
Continue reading "An Engineer in Wonderland - Cunning battery adapter" »
An Engineer in Wonderland has a new home. You can find this particular entry here. If you wish to leave a comment, please do that on the new blog.
I am trying to write some code for a microcontroller - a PIC - and have stumbled across a problem, and a sort-of answer.
As I have no formal training in well-structured assembler code, I suspect my answer is sub-optimal - or even sub-passable - and could do with some help.
My hope is that some kind soul will say 'What you need is to use Shubunkin's inferior parameter pass, or the
Smyth-Hamilton's data swap', or some such.
Anyway, this is the problem:
Continue reading "An Engineer in Wonderland - Help Alice with assembler code" »
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An Engineer in Wonderland has a new home. You can find this particular entry here. If you wish to leave a comment, please do that on the new blog.
'Invisibility' cloaks keep getting into the news.
And normally it means that someone has made an array of little resonant structures that have a negative refractive index at microwave frequencies.
This is clever, it shows the theory works, and points the way to negative refractive index optical materials in the future.
It turns out that the same maths predict a way to protect buildings from certain earthquakes.
Continue reading "An Engineer in Wonderland - Maths foils earthquakes" »
In this guest blog post, taken from the Eurocircuits blog, Ben Verwaest considers whether hand-soldering can reach the same high quality result as reflow or wave soldering.Are you ready for the challenge? Let's take a look at the mini-wave soldering technique.
The picture to the right shows that tools and skills are the basics to achieve a good result in hand-soldering. You agree?
Hand-soldering is in most cases the last step in the prototype assembly process. Why is it less controlled and more difficult than other steps in the manufacturing. It is something we all know how to do. It's just heating up a PCB and a component to make a solder joint. Isn't that simple?
Continue reading "Guest blog: Hand-soldering - point by point or mini-wave technique?" »
Welcome to another post in the series by Nick Locke, of Nicab Ltd, who has over 15 years experience in the electronics manufacturing industry specialising in interconnection cable assembly.
Something we get asked a lot is what we think of copy or generic connectors. In other words, connectors that are direct copies of branded connectors such as Molex, Tyco, JST and many more.
For many people looking to reduce costs generic connects often enable you to make savings anywhere between 30-50%.
Greater availability: the generic connectors generally do not have the same supply issues that mainstream manufacturers sometimes have so you are still able to maintain production.
Continue reading "Only Connect: Alternative generic connectors" »
One for the
Digital Life category - concerning digital death...
There's an interesting article on
New Scientist that tackles an unfortunate but important topic - the digital legacy left behind when a loved one dies. See
Dealing with death in a digital world Niall Firth begins:
When tragedy strikes and a loved one is lost, the last thing a grieving family would think is "what's to become of their Facebook page?" But for a growing number of people each year, dealing with digital belongings the deceased leaves behind - from their Twitter account to computer files stored remotely, in the cloud - is a difficult, messy task.
Continue reading "Death in a digital world" »
Welcome to another post in the series by Nick Locke, of Nicab Ltd, who has over 15 years experience in the electronics manufacturing industry specialising in interconnection cable assembly.
In a meeting last week with a sales manger of a very well known connector manufacturer, I was told his prediction of the mains cable becoming obsolete in the next 10-15 years.
Furthermore, according to him, the whole interconnect industry is under threat as new technologies are making electronics smaller and the need for cables becoming a thing of the past.
That is quite a depressing thought especially if your job is to sell connectors! I personally don't agree with the first point as the ability to charge products without a cable requires a manufacturer to sell products that most people can't use because they don't have the means to power it.
Continue reading "Only Connect: The future of interconnect in Electronics" »
Tiny educational computer
Raspberry Pi is to be distributed by RS Components and Premier Farnell (aka element14).
Premier Farnell's CEO Harriet Green sees the start of something big:
"At element14 we take very seriously the need to encourage more young
people to take up technology and IT courses at schools and universities
across the world and this is one reason why I am so excited about
Raspberry Pi. There has been a serious and potentially worrying decline
in the numbers of students in the US and Europe taking these courses.
The result is simple - less design engineers to create the amazing
innovations of tomorrow.
Continue reading "Element14 CEO speaks: Computer literacy and Raspberry Pi" »
Time for another picture gallery, and thanks to NASA for the pictures celebrating the 50th anniversary of American orbital space flight.
It's time for another in our series of posts featuring the excellent electronics cartoons from